In many ways, the twenty-fifth of October was an ordinary day, which means it started with a fight with my mother and carried on from there.

The fight with my mother was because there wasn’t any milk for the tea. As per usual, this was my fault. Nothing was ever Hilary’s fault. God knows what she did before she had me to blame for everything. Because of the fight, I was late for school again. Mr Cox, my tutor, gave me a detention. I tried to reason with him.

“But it’s my birthday,” I said. “You can’t give me a detention on my birthday. That’s Fascism.”

“No it isn’t,” said Mr Cox. “It’s frustration. But you can do the detention on Monday.” He gave me his cheesy, I’m-your-friend smile. “Happy Birthday.”

After that I got told off for talking in geography. Then I got told off for talking in maths. Then I got told off for not having my homework in history. Then I got told off for not having my homework in English. And, finally, I got told off by the headteacher for talking back to my geography teacher. All systems normal.

I never let that stuff bother me too much, though. I mean, it was life, wasn’t it? I knew what preachers (teachers and parents) were like. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t hate my mother, except maybe when I was really little and didn’t know any better. And school was never my thing, either. My best lesson at school was lunch. I was really good at lunch. I was enthusiastic, paid attention, tried hard and never gave the dinner ladies any lip. If they’d given out marks for lunch, I would’ve been top of the class. But my standards weren’t as high in my other subjects. In my other subjects I was bottom of the class, unless I’d been sent to the headteacher and wasn’t actually in the class. No one ever asked me what I’d got in a test unless they’d done really badly and wanted to find someone who had done worse.